Grub Club – offering the ultimate sustainable protein boost for dogs

There’s something of biologist and natural historian David Attenborough, with perhaps a hint of naturalist Chris Packham, in the way that Grub Club co-founder and LBS alumnus Alessandro Di Trapani enthuses about the benefits of the company’s hypoallergenic insect-based dog food that’s “perfect for sensitive tummies, itchy skin, and the planet”.

With pets responsible for an incredible 20 per cent of the world’s consumption of fish and meat, London-based Grub Club has turned to making bug-based dog food as a healthier alternative to standard dog food fare, while also being kinder to the planet.

Grub Club’s food and treats are all grain-free, come in fully recyclable packaging, and are vet-approved. The company uses the larvae from the black soldier fly as its source of protein. These flies are fed on organic plant-based matter and come from two insect-farming facilities - Protix in the Netherlands and UK-based Better Origin.

“Black soldier flies are the perfect protein for pets,” says Alessandro, ‘Ale’.

“They can be fed on food waste so they’re effectively a closed loop food system where organic matter and its nutrients are put back into the food chain. Our food range – including such products as an ‘All-Day Buffet’ that includes blueberries and pomegranates to boost immune health, to ‘Poop Perfector, to ‘Sit Roll Treat and Repeat’ -- benefit from key amino acids and omega 3. Our range has everything a pet needs.”

‘Ideated within the LBS ecosystem’, Ale says that it was an article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal about an entrepreneur who wanted to create the “Beyond Meat of pet food that provided the sparking point for Grub Club.

And it was Covid that offered the burning platform for a number of trends that would be important to breathing life into the new company. An amplified search for alternative, healthier foods; the ‘pet-mania’ triggered by the pandemic, with more than 3m British households acquiring a pet during lockdown – all these elements helped fuel the emerging Grub Club business plan.

“Pet humanisation has proved to be another important trend,” observes Ale. “The notion that pets are given the care, comfort and attention similar to human family members means that people care about the food they give to their pets.”

After looking at a number of potential alternatives to today’s range of dog foods, such as lab-grown meats, Ale and his co-founder co-founder, Hugh Petit, alighted up the potential of insect-based foods. With its huge potential to upcycle, with a low carbon footprint and tremendous value to pet health, the idea for Grub Club was born.

While he acknowledges that the product range that the two-year old company presently offers sits in the premium end of the market, “it is by no means unattainable” and there is substantial ability to scale the business in the future.

Launched in the second year of his MBA at LBS, Grub Club’s Ale and Hugh attracted an initial £420,000, raised from friends, family and an early-stage fund, allowing them to start the company with three varieties of dog treats. A further £560,000 has now been raised, allowing for a further expansion of the product range which may help move the company from e-commerce into full outlet retail in the coming year.

With the lifecycle of the black soldier fly allowing for very efficient production, insect protein is clearly the future of pet food.

Support from LBS, and ’23, the year of winning awards

Ale credits LBS, the support of Institute of Entrepreneurship and Private Capital (IEPC) and the Incubator programme with offering Grub Club a great “daily support system”, and with helping him to develop both hard and soft skills for his future life as an entrepreneur.

2023 was, Ale admits, a year of winning awards. Not only was Grub Club the Grand Prix winner of this year’s Sky Zero Footprint Fund, the company also scooped the Impact Award in association with Future Plus, the Marie Claire Sustainability Award 2023 and a place on the Amazon Sustainability Accelerator.